Demons
by meyerlemon
Summary: Jack gets his internal monologue on. SamJack angst.


Title: Demons Rating: R Summary: Jack gets his internal monologue on.  
  
She thought she had demons. Bullshit.  
  
He says, again, that she has to go to the shrink. It wasn't optional, not something she could do if and when she felt like it. She had been shot, and when she got back on the job, she had dropped two people. It was a clean shooting, she argues. She wasn't messed up over it.  
  
He couldn't remember how often they'd had this conversation.  
  
He knew the real reason Sam didn't want to go see the shrink was that, secretly, she believed that there was maybe something wrong with her. She didn't want to look too closely into the abyss, in case the abyss opened its eyes and looked back. She played it like she was starched up and well- adjusted, cold, but he recognized the signs. She thought she had demons.  
  
This girl, this little slip of a kid, who had never become one flesh with another person, who had never been a parent, who had never tried to keep a child safe, or a marriage alive. Demons. He felt a flush of scorn over that. He guessed that she wasn't so far out of her teen years that angst didn't have some appeal left.  
  
"I'm not going," she snaps, like that makes it final.  
  
"Agent Spade, I have better things to do than babysit you. Make an appointment and go- this isn't a discussion."  
  
His voice comes out colder than he intended, and Sam flinches like he just slapped her. She looks down, fiddles with the clasp on her holster, like she does sometimes when she's nervous. He thinks it's sort of like sucking your thumb for her: it's a comfort to know that she has control over something, that if things get ugly she can whip out her piece and instill some order in the world.  
  
It troubles him that he still has theories about her. It troubles him a lot.  
  
****  
  
A long time ago. They're in a car, parked. Get out, he's telling himself. Get out of the car, walk away, go home.  
  
But he doesn't. Of course not. And he realizes, as he inhales the sweet- bitter almond scent of her skin from across the car, that they both knew this was going to happen. He saw it the moment he met her. It's inevitable. It's fate, destiny. Kismet. Although those are usually not words people use to describe really shitty amoral things you're about to do, it's kismet, just the same.  
  
Or maybe he just tells himself that because it's so fucking impossible not to reach out a shaking hand and put it on the smooth curve of her knee, and he needs to blame someone.  
  
"Don't," she says, her voice strained.  
  
"I'm sorry," he says.  
  
But he doesn't move his hand. He can't. A magnetic field that could power the tri-state area is keeping them frozen there. He can feel the heat of her flesh through the wool of her slacks. All he wants to do is press a kiss on the palm of her hand, or maybe he wants to rip off that crisp cotton shirt and yank her onto his lap, or maybe he wants to tell her to start the car, and keep driving, all the way to Mexico, where they'll open a bar and have seven fat, happy babies.  
  
He wants all of those things, and more, and he also wants to get out of the car and go home and try to forget that he tried to get in Samantha Spade's pants.  
  
She shifts a little, and he finds that he can move his hand. He slides to the far edge of his seat, pressed up against the door.  
  
Sam takes one of those breaths that's tries to be deep, but comes out shallow because your heart's beating so fast.  
  
"We can't."  
  
"I know," he replies. "I'm sorry."  
  
The inadequacy of his response hangs between them, almost visible. He wants to tell her that she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, that he dreams hot sweaty dreams about her almost every night, that sometimes he can't breathe when she walks into the room. He wants to tell her that she deserves better than a middle-aged married guy. He wants to tell her that he's sorry that he's not single. He wants to ask if she knows any mad scientists who can transport them into an alternate timeline where maybe they meet at Walgreen's and are both single and can just check into the nearest cheap hotel and have each other until they can't think, can't walk, can't see straight, and can finally breathe.  
  
But he doesn't say any of these things.  
  
"I'm sorry," he repeats. "I don't- I've never done this before."  
  
That comes out sounding horrible. It sounds like he does this every single weekend of his life. Jack just sits with the shame of that for a minute, and he's surprised when Sam speaks.  
  
"Fuck," he hears her say, and then she hits the release on her seat belt and kind of falls against him and her hand cups his jaw. Her breath is scalding hot on his lips.  
  
"Don't," he whispers. "We can't."  
  
But even he doesn't believe it, and it's not like he tries to stop her.  
  
They kiss for an hour that night. He feels like he's swimming in maple syrup, like everything's slow and thick and warm.  
  
They're oddly chaste: he doesn't even try to feel her up. The kissing, by itself, is not only enough but almost too much, and when he moves her hair back so he can kiss her neck, she tastes so sweet he tears up for a second.  
  
His hands never stop shaking.  
  
Finally, they can stop- they don't want to, but they can, which is an improvement. Jack straightens his tie. Sam clears her throat and checks her gun.  
  
"So," he says. "I should go."  
  
"Right."  
  
She won't look at him.  
  
"Are you okay?"  
  
"Sure," she says, staring at the steering wheel.  
  
He knows that's a lie, but he accepts it anyway, because he needs to get away from her. As he gets out of the car, he has a vague notion that maybe this was it, maybe they'll be able to stay away from each other, now.  
  
Two weeks later, they're sleeping together.  
  
***  
  
"Well," Samantha says, "I'm sorry I wasted your time."  
  
She sounds petulant, like his daughters will sound one day soon when he enforces curfew or tells them to take off that makeup. This freaks him out, for no very good reason. It always freaks him out when he and Sam play out a little daughter/daddy drama, but it shouldn't. He's so much older than she is.  
  
He's a husband, a father, a man who's been through the shit. She's a girl so young she doesn't even have two vertical grooves between her eyebrows from worrying over a philandering husband.  
  
He still wants her, of course. Most nights when he can't sleep he thinks up wild schemes to get them out of the city, out of the Bureau, out of their lives, and into a little house in Akron. Some nights it gets really bad and he almost calls her. Tomorrow, he tells himself. If you still feel that way in the morning, you can call.  
  
He never does. In the morning his wife and daughters are awake and visible, and he knows that he can never sacrifice three women for her, and each night he thinks that maybe he will, anyway. It's a double bind that makes his head spin, but when he does the math, it's so inescapable: staying with Marie makes three women happy. Leaving with Sam makes one woman happy.  
  
He never counts himself in this equation.  
  
Sam, tired of his silence, starts to leave his office.  
  
"Wait," he says.  
  
She pauses. He can see her shoulders tense.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
He can't think of anything to say. The moment stretches. She turns to face him. He opens his mouth, then shuts it again.  
  
"Nothing," he finally says. Her face falls, and she walks away.  
  
Nothing, he realizes, is exactly right. There's just nothing left to say.  
  
Sam crosses to her desk and picks up the phone. He wonders if she's calling the shrink, and, belatedly, he realizes that she does have a demon to be worried about.  
  
And he's it.  
  
~fin~ 


End file.
